Toni Morrison

Writer

Born: 18 February 1931

Birthplace: Lorain, Ohio

Best known as: Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved

Name at birth: Chloe Anthony Wofford

Toni Morrison is a literary giant of the 1980s and 1990s, and all the more famous for being both a woman and an African-American. Her book Beloved won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize; in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her other major works include Song of Solomon (1977), Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998). Morrison was named the Goheen Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University in 1987.